Finding Unauthorized Faith…

I loved my The Walking Dead marathon so much that I watched all of Fear the Walking Dead and now I’ve made my way to the comics. If you’re a TWD fan and haven’t read the comic books, I highly recommend them. There is so much that we don’t know/see in the TV series.

The above scene is post-Shane death — Shane never makes it out of the first camp outside of Atlanta (and Rick’s not the one who kills him). Tyreese also joins the group much earlier than in the TV series. In this scene, the two are discussing how the Walkers (Roamers) are not the scariest part of their new life. The scariest part is how the people they’ve known for years are changing and not because of bites.

Extreme situations are bringing to light the heroes and monsters within all of them. Tyreese reveals that a man he thought of as a sweet, older gentleman. One he’s known for years recently tried to rape his daughter when she was looking for food. And Rick shares about how Shane just turned on him. Wanted to kill Rick because he had desired Lori for years and finally felt like — with Rick out of the way — he could have her.

The thing I’ve learned in life is that when we are in extreme circumstances — extremely good or bad — what is really in us comes to the surface. If we are greedy, we become more so when presented with abundant fortune or debilitating poverty. However, if we are generous, we become more so in both situations.

If you live and observe long enough, you realize it is not the circumstances that make the person. It’s the person who chooses how they want to react and face the circumstances. If we are heroic on the inside, we’ll be heroic on the outside. If we’re selfish and hateful on the inside, that will come out too. As scripture says, we should be more concerned about what we put inside our souls, our hearts, the essence of who we are than on the outward physical things.

Our circumstances don’t matter as much as who we are in them — who we choose to become.

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. ~ Proverbs 4:23 NLT